BRU LE - 1.3.7

So, how does it compare to Retrospect?

I've been using v1.2.8 for a couple of weeks now with an Exabyte Magnum 1x7 LTO-3 tape library to back up an Xserve and Xserve RAID. It was not as intuitive as I had hoped, but phone support has been excellent. They walked me through some minor issues that I had trouble with and the software runs great. There are some features that I'd like to see included in future updates or upgrades though. For Mac users, I would recommend this software if your need requires control of a tape library device or even a stand-alone tape drive. For bootable drive backups, I use Super Duper! and am very pleased with that as well. tmv

I can speak (so far) to the support -- nonexistant.
I d/l'd BRU on Wednesday to give it a whirl, and it crashed as soon as I tried to do anything within the interface. Checking the crash log, the crashed thread seemed to be all BRU.app native stuff, so I fired off a support request to the developer, included the crash log and a detail of my setup and particulars.

Thursday.
(Sent another request to make sure that it wasn't a simple email issue.)

Friday.

Saturday.

Sunday.

(Not even a canned automated response.)
Maybe Monday a response??

So far, support is nonexistant.

A fair amount of Unix background (e.g. regular expressions and scripting) seems a prerequisite to fully understand and utilize this app. The GUI is no more than a front-end to a set of command line utilities (e.g. main bru command options resemble tar). That can be advantageous depending on your perspective and circumstances.

Overall the GUI could be more intuitive and refined. The restore interface is particularly weak, especially for searching (e.g. an long-running uninterruptible search required an app force quit). I only manged to run one full backup test with v1.2.5 and the speed (w/ verify) was "acceptable" to a FW 500 drive. I uninstalled 1.2.5 before installing 1.2.6 tonight so I don't have the log to check details. I didn't try any restoring data or scheduling backups.

GUI documentation is incomplete or incorrect. Preferences examples don't match the interface. Most of the manual documents the command line utils.

The installer needs to be more security-conscious with file permissions. The uninstaller has errors (e.g. bogus pathnames) and makes some risky assumptions (e.g. filename wildcards).

Traditionally BRU has been a reliable "power admin/user" Unix utility and I hope that's true with the OS X version tho' I need to do enough integrity testing before committing to that. One thing's obvious: it's not an out-of-the-box solution for casual users.

My one "pre-sales" contact with Tolis Group was superb, a pleasant surprise at a time when customer satisfaction seems increasingly irrelevant to more tech companies. I have an initial impression they're committed to product development, even if it takes time for it to mature on OS X. I'll be sending them some detailed feedback soon, including issues I've briefly mentioned here.

I hope other folks, especially if dissatisfied with current backup solutions, will investigate whether or not this might be a product they can use (even if not immediately) and a company they'd like to support.